Congress solved nothing, so now others are going to offer their solutions.
Congress rejected the abolition of qualifier replays and the shifting of the All-Ireland finals forward by two weeks, so now players themselves are going to have their say.
Congress once more stuck its head in the sand, so now the likes of Karl Lacey are going to stick their heads above the parapet.
The Donegal wing-back has a pretty drastic remedy for fixture congestion and the overloading of GAA players.
Something tells us it wouldn’t get through Congress.
The 2012 All-Ireland winner proposes the split of Gaelic football into two separate streams – county players and club players.
The All-Star defender is yet to return for Donegal this year after his club season with Four Masters dragged into late December and he believes too much is being asked of players.
In an interview with the Irish Independent he says the lack of communication between club and county managers makes the current structures unfeasible.
“It nearly has to go down the route of rugby where, if you are good enough to go into a county squad you step away from your club and if you’re not good enough for your county team any more you step back down again.
“There is far too much and not enough structure for club and county managers talking to each other.
“It’s all about load management and how often players are on their feet. How often they training? What intensity do they train at?
“It’s crazy stuff what’s going on and what’s being asked of lads.”
Having earned a masters in sports performance from University of Limerick, Lacey chose to take a year out of his career in 2015 to focus on his football. It ended for Donegal with quarter-final defeat to Mayo and Lacey is yet to return to Rory Gallagher’s panel this year.
It is his job to know his own body and he knew he needed a rest. Donegal head to Kerry on Sunday looking for their first win in the Kingdom since 1988.
He is currently focused on his new job lecturing in strength and conditioning and performance analysis in Blanchardstown IT, while also coordinating a new partnership between Letterkenny IT and Donegal GAA.
A recent trip to the Arsenal academy, where he worked as part of his masters, highlighted for him what he sees as the unsustainable demands placed on GAA players.
“You can have a player out every night for two hours. Bodies can’t go through that, bodies break down and managers don’t see that.
“They might be manager for a team for two years and all he wants is to get the most out of that team for those two years. Where that player is in four years’ time is irrelevant to him. That’s the eye of the coach.
“You need somebody that’s looking at the actual players themselves, making sure that player when he is 21 years of age, that when he is 27 or 28, that he is peaking.
“If county teams had a structure in place where the strength and conditioning managers oversaw everything and tells a player where to go, it might solve it.”
Expect plenty more of these sort of suggestions until the GAA addresses issues with its calendar.
